THERE’S a new Gabrielle Solis on the American airwaves, but this desperate housewife prefers to be called Gabriela. And she speaks Spanish all the time.

In one of the more unusual programming moves of recent years, the Spanish-language network Univision in January began televising “Amas de Casa Desesperadas,” a remake of the ABC hit “Desperate Housewives.”

Not subtitled or dubbed, this is a new version of the comic soap opera-mystery. Except it’s not.

The story of the intertwined lives of women in a fictional American suburb takes place not on Wisteria Lane but on Calle Manzanares (or apple orchard, after the apple motif in the opening credits of this four-year-old series), and apart from Gabrielle/Gabriela, the characters have new Hispanic names. But otherwise the two versions have an eerie sameness to them. Most members of the multinational cast of Univision’s show bear uncanny resemblances to their English-language counterparts. (In one notable exception, Edie Britt, a k a Roxana Guzman, is a brunette, not a blonde.) And the episodes are largely scene-for-scene re-creations of the first season, having been shot from the same scripts, with Spanish dialogue substituted.

“Amas de Casa Desesperadas” is a departure for Univision, which has been the dominant Spanish-language network in the United States for years thanks to its steady diet of imported blockbuster telenovelas. This is the first time the network has remade a popular show from its English competition in the United States, a series that its viewers, many of whom are bilingual, could and presumably did watch in the original version. Moreover, the 23 episodes are running once a week at 10 p.m. on Thursdays, not every night of the week, as traditional telenovelas do.

Still, Univision was attracted to the show precisely because “to us, this is a telenovela,” said Alina Falcón, the network’s executive vice president and operating manager. “It has a continuing story line, a very dramatic story, and deals with the daily trials and tribulations of very strong characters. It’s got all the elements: romance, drama, intrigue and, in this case, mystery.”

For those who have seen the English version, she said, executives thought it would be interesting “to see the characters they knew in a new and different light.”

The cast includes telenovela stars like Lucía Méndez of Mexico, Scarlet Ortiz of Venezuela and the Colombian actress Lorna Paz, who was in the original cast of “Yo Soy Betty, la Fea,” which ABC remade into “Ugly Betty,” as well as the singer and actress Maria Conchita Alonso, in a return to Spanish-language TV. About 5.5 million viewers tuned in to the first episode, on Jan. 10, and the program has since drawn nearly three million viewers per episode on average. Among Hispanic adults 18 to 49 years old, the show ranks among the Top 10 on TV, in either English or Spanish.

The series got to Univision through a circuitous route. It is actually the fourth clone of “Desperate Housewives”: viewers in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador already have their own country-customized versions. (Colombia and Ecuador share.) Separate casts of well-known actors were hired for each version, and some details were tweaked for cultural differences. The Univision take was adapted to reflect that Gabriela was no longer the only Hispanic in the neighborhood, for instance, and Roman Catholic icons now decorate the homes on Calle Manzanares. But all four clones followed identical plots and were shot on the same 10-house set, which was built from scratch on the outskirts of Buenos Aires by Pol-Ka, Disney’s Argentine partner in the productions. (HBO’s “In Treatment,” which began life on Israeli television, has followed the “Desperate Housewives” model.)

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Latin American broadcasters were initially reluctant to pick up “Desperate Housewives” in a dubbed English version, but the localized adaptations made the series exportable, said Diego Lerner, president of the Walt Disney Company Latin America. Disney and its ABC Studios developed the show and sold the format rights.

As the television business has become global, cross-country pollination has picked up, but so has the demand for individualized productions. In the last decade, the Dutch reality series “Big Brother” has been recreated with local casts in dozens of countries, and a number of British comedies have flowed to American networks, some (like “The Office” on NBC) more successfully than others (like “Coupling,” also on NBC).

But those series aren’t the mimics that “Amas de Casa Desesperadas” is. Mr. Lerner said some clients at first wanted to make major changes from the English original, but Disney and ABC Studios stuck to their guns. “We were big believers in the strong respect for the quality of that content,” he said. The show’s creator, Marc Cherry, wasn’t involved in the remakes but says on the Season 3 DVD that his attitude toward the clones was, “Vaya con Dios.”

With successful runs in Latin America, Univision was persuaded that it could succeed with its own remake, and the circle was completed. Univision’s version is now expected to be exported back to Mexico.

Ms. Falcón said her network was open to similar remakes, but only selectively: “It’s not a strategy.” Disney, however, is exploring using the model for other series, Mr. Lerner said, although not every show is appropriate for similar adaptations.

Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC television group, called the deals an important step toward Disney’s goal of moving from “being U.S.-centric to something that is truly global.” The realization that “Desperate Housewives” could be a format in other countries, she added, was a “creative moment that no one had anticipated.”